Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Missing Airliner: The Perfect Mystery?

Mystery fans follow the missing plane story because, so far, it appears to be the first case of a plane being virtually or actually vaporized. Not a single concrete clue to its location or disposal seems to exist. How does this happen in a concrete universe?

So the passport trail becomes critical. The latest: one of those two Iranian false passport holders was supposedly seeking political asylum in Germany and was on his way there--and then the whole plot--plane, passengers and all--disappears?

I have read mysteries for years, and there's never been one like this! Agatha Christie's novels are as close as any writer's ever come to this disappearing act--other than magicians. She wrote during wartime, so she used spies and double identities in her plots, as did Shakespeare, but Agatha Christie is famous for her locked room mystery

Computer technology complicates events, of course. Is there a way now to erase a whole plane and its manifest from radar and memory? Were the Malaysian pilot and crew in on a plot to escape detection as the plane leaped from the South China Sea to Germany?

Every nation on earth has a stake in this story, which has revealed that officials have not been checking passports against the Interpol list of stolen and lost passports, as they must do, as a critical step in avoiding disasters plotted by terrorists.

If nations practice security measures perfectly, though, they also foil the schemes of freedom lovers seeking asylum. How do we resolve the plot of the missing plane without throwing the desperate back into the dragon's mouth?

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About Me

The author leads a quadruple life as a creative writer, journalist, medievalist, and artist. From Western New York, she gained insights into wildlife and spiritualism. In Appalachia, she learned to love America's oldest mountains. She has settled happily, with a tuxedo cat named Chopin and a Basset Hound named Mickey Mantle, in Dunkirk, New York.